FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT MAMBO KINGS - PAGE 4

It sounds like a cartoonish science-fiction epic from south of the border: "The Mambo King in Outer Space." Instead, it's Tito Puente, a legend in the Latin jazz field, playfully discussing his plans for the future. "By the year 2000, I want to have the first Latin band to play on the moon," Puente said from Westchester, N.Y. "I'd like to take a rocket and go up there and put my timbales in place of the flag. Ooh, wouldn't that be something? I'd leave the timbales up there for everyone to see."

Across the landscape of American pop music, many crossover dreams are becoming reality. These are the dreams of Spanish-language entertainers as they try to cross over into the huge and lucrative American market. For years, many tried and failed. But Latin music has recently exploded on the American pop scene. Cuban-American singer Gloria Estefan has emerged as queen of Latin pop music. Selena, a Mexican-American singer from Texas, hit it big in English after her death. Puerto Rican hearttrob Ricky Martin is enjoying a media frenzy that rivals the hoopla over a young Elvis Presley.

Eat your heart out, Madonna. Antonio Banderas phoned last week and didn't put his wife on the line. He's the Latin heartthrob who deflated a panting Material Girl by introducing her to Senora Banderas (Ana Leza) at a party in Madonna's Truth or Dare. But, alas, the call wasn't personal. He's one of the stars of The House of the Spirits, and though the film based on Isabel Allende's haunting novel is enjoying good numbers abroad, Americans haven't stormed the box office. So Banderas was talking from Spain, where he is "looping" (matching dialogue)

Spartina (Alfred A. Knopf), by John Casey, about a man who is in love with his wife, his mistress, his sons and his boat, won the 1989 National Book Award for fiction this week. The non-fiction award went to From Beirut to Jerusalem (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), by Thomas L. Friedman, an account of the Middle East conflict by the correspondent who won two Pulitzer Prizes for his reporting from that region for The New York Times. The winners each will receive $10,000. The prizes were announced at the annual awards ceremony of the non-profit National Book Foundation.

I just returned from a vacation to the U.S. Southwest, where I learned that they have a different way of rating movies in Santa Fe, N.M. Instead of awarding stars, the critics at The New Mexican newspaper use a culinary designation of worth -- the symbol of the chili pepper. Four chili peppers, the highest rating, means "hot," three is "tasty," one and two mean "could use more spice." There`s even an equivalent to our zero-star rating. The chili pepper is too good for this lowest level of worth, so a picture of an onion, defined as a "stinker," is used instead.

Shortly before 3 p.m. on a recent Saturday, an hourlong salsa mambo dance class was ready to begin on the sixth floor of the Main Library in Fort Lauderdale. The class takes place in a gallery space surrounded by the moon-rock and rare-book collections. "We're honoring Hispanic Heritage Month," said Barbara Miller, library programming manager. "We can have some fun and do some dancing." Salsa, chips and pitchers of iced tea were positioned on a table at one end of the room. A library CD - Ernesto Domingo's Mambo Jumbo - blared from a boom box. Sandra Kutno was ready, doing a little two-step along the edge of the low parquet dance platform in the center of the room.

Mary Scott Russell, the mayor of South Miami, almost exploded with anger when she heard that South Florida businesses and local governments are canceling one of the most extravagant annual lobbying soirees in Tallahassee. The "Miami-Dade Days" lobbying festival that draws thousands of South Floridians to Tallahassee and features musical acts such as the Mambo Kings, a big kettle of paella, and professional sports team cheerleaders is being canceled because of the lobbyist gift ban that Gov. Jeb Bush signed into law Tuesday.

THE MEDIEVAL READER. Edited by Norman F. Cantor. HarperCollins. 368 pp. $35. As Norman F. Cantor demonstrates, there was more to the Middle Ages than darkness. A professor at New York University, Cantor takes pains to show, as he writes in his far-reaching introduction, that the so-called Dark Ages provided "the direct formative antecedents of the modern European and American world."What's more, the era - lasting roughly from the fall of Rome in the fifth century to the start of the Renaissance in the 15th - produced works of lasting literary value.

A Simple Habana Melody. Oscar Hijuelos. HarperCollins. $24.95; 342 pp. Thanks to television, fanzines and the World Wide Web, music fans have access to an almost limitless amount of information about singers and performers. But what about composers -- those unsung heroes of the music business: Who will tell their stories? Leave it to Oscar Hijuelos, whose previous novels have taken up the tales of men and women who've fallen through the cracks, to bring such a figure to life. The hero of Hijuelos' fifth novel, A Simple Habana Melody, is Israel Levin, the extravagantly protuberant (and fictional)

Lovers is a sizzling, well-acted tale about a love triangle of potentially dangerous consequences. Jorge Sanz is Paco, a former soldier who decides to stay in Madrid after his discharge and seek employment. He also wants to be close to his sweetheart, Trini, a shy and virtuous girl played by fetching Maribel Verdu. The innocent pair have barely kissed, yet they hope to marry. Trini has saved a great deal of money, and she is eager to be a perfect wife to Paco. Paco answers an ad for a room to rent.